Players will be tempted with such seedy choices in Rockstar Games' wildly anticipated ninth entry in their controversial but lucrative Grand Theft Auto franchise, set for release April 29. GTA IV will be the first game in the 10-year-old "GTA" series for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 video game consoles.

Video game analyst Mike Hickey at Janco Partners expects five million copies of GTA IV will sell the first week of release, on par with last year's record-breaking US$300 million first-week sales of Bungie Studios' "Halo 3." Hickey says that Rockstar's hush-hush promotional effort - more viral, less in-your-face than the "Halo 3" campaign - could give GTA IV an edge.

"Maybe the first week 'GTA IV' sales won't do what 'Halo 3' did, but I can almost guarantee they'll probably outsell 'Halo 3' in the first year," said Hickey.

I dunno. Vice City also included a strip joint (Mission; sit and watch a show to buy the place) and drunk driving. So technically those aren't new, but will probably be more in depth than they have been before.

This game is starting to sound better the more I read about it. I was apprehensive about getting pumped for "another GTA". Since GTA3, they've been following the same formula a little too closely. If they change it up enough, which is sounds like they're doing, I might not get as bored as quickly as I did with San Andreas.

I thought GTA3 was too big once you got to the third island, and I got bored. VC I couldn't put down and felt it had the perfect blend of size, missions, and other stuff to do. After completing the first 1/3 of SA I was bored. It was too big, I was sick of doing stupid stuff like eating and weight lifting. Hopefully they go back to something closer to VC in scope.

i still dont understand how anyone can get bored with SA... i know it can be tedious stuff having to eat and all but cmon... lear jets anywhere you want to go, parachuting from those lear jets.. gambling in vegas, i was playing million dollar roullette and blackjack tables, taking the apache and just going to town on cities, taking the harrier out for a spin and fighing the army.. man that game was great.

yea i agree i dont really like niko bellic and the game might become too serious and less fun dont you have to hot wire parked cars now when you steal them i mean thats cool and all but it could get really lame after a while.

This game created it's own genre basically. And unlike Halo 3, there are ZERO games that are on the same level as GTA in the same genre. Any one can name a couple games as good or better than Halo in the FPS department. But as far as this game goes, nothing comes close. After skipping the last GTA I think I will pick this one up.

That is just begging for the media to jump all over it, and you know that it's going to be something various groups latch onto in their attempts to demonize the title further, no matter how it's implemented or presented by GTA itself.

Maybe the Gentlemen's Club union kept the media silenced. But I mean just cause Fox recently made complete fools out of themselves doesn't mean that they are the only ones. The media in general doesn't know how to talk about games. Not just fox. Heck even the TV dedicated to gaming isn't too good.

I say Fox because I saw the 'seX- Box' story 3 different times on various Fox news programming, both national and local. They also jumped all over that Mortal Kombat story a while back like a fat kid on cake. Generally speaking, when I think overblown bullshit spewing from empty-headed "journalists", I think Fox News. They are always the first to spin everything in the most scandalous way to get ratings in my experience.

Besides, even if previous GTA titles featured drunk driving, GTA 4 is so damn big, and is going to receive so much attention, that it's the one that will be singled out. They aren't actually reporting on news here; they're just trying to boost ratings. Jumping onto the bandwagon that will follow this game out of the gates is one way to do that.

Um, hello? ALL news is about ratings. That's why the majority of the news is bad news. All cable news is ridiculous (See Presidential Campaign) Fox News is an easy target but there is no such thing as a unbiased news station that only cares about the news.

No kidding it's about ratings, that's what all television is about. The difference is in the ways that it's presented, and in my opinion Fox relies on the most sensationalistic methods to deliver their stories, going beyond just the "if it bleeds it leads" credo, and making certain that every store seems to have an air of that mindset. Consistently espousing views that have no merit besides riling people up is what I often see from that network and the people who have shows on it more often than others. I'm not defending any news, I'm just calling out Fox as one of the major sources of such "journalism".

Every site/magazine/podcast I checkout keeps saying that this stuff is "new" or "added" to GTA. It's not. It just sounds like R* fleshed them out more, and made them full-fledged features.

In the older GTA, I remember a mission(one of the better ones IMO, so I don't understand why people can't remember this), where you drank some moonshine with some bootlegger dude, when his mini-brewery exploded, blowing the dudes arms off, then you(intoxicated) had to drive him in his busted van, to the Hospital, before the timer/his health- ran out, all while the screen was blurred and the vehicles handling was tweaked to make it swerve all over the road. If you hit something it would do more harm to the guy, making you constantly correct it's direction to stay in your lane.

quoting: '“Maybe the first week ‘GTA IV' sales won't do what ‘Halo 3' did, but I can almost guarantee they'll probably outsell ‘Halo 3' in the first year,” said Hickey.'

wait wait.. something doesn't make sense.. are they actually joking? GTA IV? Comparing to Halo 3? OMG .. are they on drugs or what? IMO i think GTA IV will sell twice as much as Halo 3 sold (maybe even more)... coz at that moment there were ~12m XBox 360 sold.. which led to around 3.3m copies in its first 12 days.. now lets compare that with GTA IV.. GTA IV is on two platforms, where one (360) has sold 17m atm, and shud be around 19m when GTA IV arives, the other one (PS3) has sold 10m, which should be around 12m when GTA IV arives. that is an install base of 32m of people who can play GTA IV.. then next to that.. GTA IV is much more anticipated than Halo 3, has more fans (yes it will sell alot of PS3's and 360's). also GTA has the better gameplay than Halo (comparing the older GTA's with older Halo's, not talking about GTA IV)..

so i think i know what will win the record.. and thats not Halo 3, it was a few months of holding the record, but GTA IV will sell more than Halo 3 in its first 24 hours!! esspecially with its pre-orders and multiplatform..

I am sorry if this is in the wrong zone, but i think it should be in this zone.. greetzz

This guy is comparing apples and oranges. I will get GTA when it comes out, just like i got Halo 3 when it came out. But, Halo is for only one console. GTA is for two. I would definitely expect that it will outsell Halo 3 because the PS3 owners(me included) have only a couple and I mean couple of decent games out right now. Everyone with a PS3 will buy it. Plus the millions of 360 owners. Sorry, you just cant compare these two games.

as cool as this may sound this is only going to really piss me off. I can see it now

go to bar order drinks(game has stupid blurry effect) niko starts to stumble hits on a couple of flusies tries to sleep with them but he needs a car (for some odd reason) just to do this. So he drunkenly walks over to the nearest car but right before he takes hoopty he throws up onto the hoochi mamas gold spary painted high heels so they run away. Pissed with a bad case of blue balls niko steals the car from their... YOU GET A TOPSY TURBY RE TARTED CONTROLS THAT SOME SNICKERING ASS HOLE DEVELOPER AT ROCKSTAR THOUGHT WAS FUNNY, THE SH1TTY CONTROLS MAKES YOU CRASH INTO THE NEAREST PO PO PIG JUST TO GET SHOT THE F*CK UP!!! Wake up at the hospital with no guns less monies and a hang over ;_;

saint's row had also used drugs and alcohol. i don't think it brings to much fun (the effect was only for few seconds). http://www.youtube.com/watc... Maybe it will be an achievement: finish driving school while drunk.